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technology_dude found an unsurprising but amusing little story that BP is buying keywords on Google and Yahoo for things like "Oil Spill" to help spin some damage control. I guess if you can't plug your spill, the least you can do is try to clog the flow of information.

Good question. I mean, I hear that the janitors are still cleaning the toilets in BP headquarters! Where are their priorities?!

Seriously, they're a big company, they can focus on more than one thing at a time... It's like the Mythical Man-Month -- Just throwing resources at the problem isn't necessarily going to make it better, and could well make it worse.

It's not like anybody is going to confuse a site on bp.com with real news.

Probably the reason is that reporting of the oil spill cleanup efforts are riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods. I was reading several news organizations reports on the "top hat" approach a month or so ago and the amount of variability was insane, given that all they had to do was accurately re-print what BP Engineering had published. Some papers actually claimed it was "ice" clogging up the device for goodness sake.

If by "real news" you mean "more media hype" then yes. We get it - the oil spill is an environmental disaster. It's bad for BP, it's really bad for fisherman in the Gulf, and it's generally bad for the economy in all the Gulf states, and it's definitely bad for the marine ecosystem.

BP has already suffered a near crippling blow. They have lost *100 billion* dollars in market cap. The CEO is going to be toast along with quite a few other people as soon as they have the situation calmed down - the board just doesn't want to toast him until things quiet down a bit. The other companies involved, Transocean, Andarko, etc. have suffered proportionally similar blows, accounting for 10s of billions of dollars in additional market cap wiped out.

And the sad thing is that the "punish BP" bloodlust is just going to result in thousands of decent Americans who work in the energy industry losing jobs in the inevitable restructurings that will come, and those jobs will end up going elsewhere, since we still will be consuming the oil here.

The only worse penalty BP as a corporate organization could pay at this point is a firesale takeover (because their successor will have to eat the huge contingent liability here). If somebody or somebodies at BP were negligent or actively broke safety regulations, then by all means, they should be criminally prosecuted for their actions. Top execs will already pay the price when they get the boot from their cushy jobs for the poor oversight they have exercised. If they did something criminal, they should be prosecuted too.

But this... obsession... with personalizing "BP" as some sort of entity that has committed an evil act that we can "punish" in any way further than has already been done is baffling to me. People - it's *been* punished. There are a bunch of marketing and PR weenies on staff at BP and they are just trying to do their jobs here. There's nothing wrong with them promoting the site they put up as a source of information for the public about the oil spill.

What's more, at this point, more economic damage is actually being done by media hype than by oil itself. The damage to the Florida tourism industry isn't being caused by a few tar balls that washed up, it's being caused by panicked morons canceling their vacations because of what they saw on the news. While I'm all for BP and friends covering the costs of actual damage from their oil spill, I don't think it's reasonable to hold anybody other than the media accountable for the damage from their hype machine, and I can't blame BP's PR people for trying to do what they can to get their side of the story out there (as long as they aren't simply lying about it).

BP has already suffered a near crippling blow. They have lost *100 billion* dollars in market cap.... 10s of billions of dollars in additional market cap wiped out.

Oh noes, not market cap! That's the thing about market cap -- it can be wiped out instantly, but it can come back too, and the only people who lose anything are the ones who sold while it was down. If BP was planning on buying out a smaller oil company using shares of their stock, well, now would be a bad time to do that. Oh noes!

In the meantime, BP continues to make real profits to the tune of tens of millions per day.

I'm not saying it's not a blow, but it's hardly crippling. Companies can continue to operate and make substantial profits even after tremendous stock price drops. And if BP does continue to make money, then their stock price will recover.

And the sad thing is that the "punish BP" bloodlust is just going to result in thousands of decent Americans who work in the energy industry losing jobs in the inevitable restructurings that will come, and those jobs will end up going elsewhere, since we still will be consuming the oil here.

It's an odd mentality, where the cause-and-effect here wouldn't be the obvious "Executive negligence in their company losing many jobs", but rather "the public caring that the executives cut corners and ignored signs because it would cost time and thus money resulted in this disaster, and subsequent job loss".

Yes, obviously the solution is that we should not care!

No. If people attributed cause and effect correctly, maybe we'd get some real change around here.

Top execs will already pay the price when they get the boot from their cushy jobs for the poor oversight they have exercised. If they did something criminal, they should be prosecuted too.

Oh noes they'll be fired from their cushy jobs! They might have to lay low living off their scant millions for a while before getting a cushy VP job somewhere else because the last thing the incestuous network of corporate executives and board members want is to raise standards.

Nothing short of criminal prosecution will be any kind of real punishment. I'm not holding my breath on the end result, but at least one thing is going right.

But this... obsession... with personalizing "BP" as some sort of entity that has committed an evil act that we can "punish" in any way further than has already been done is baffling to me. People - it's *been* punished.

Yeah, by only making half as much net profit -- estimates of BP's efforts at cleanup and stopping the leak per day are about half of their net profit per day.

Oh, the punishment! Their Q2 and Q3 earnings statements will be less glowing! They may be penalized in the market, until the expected profits return! Please. Call me when they go into the red, even for a single quarter.

By the way, the obsession with personalizing a corporation as some sort of entity unto itself has been the obsession of the corporate executives since early last century. Is it any wonder that we have bought into the delusion that "BP" can do anything on its own? "Corporate personhood" is their baby.

If you want to end that delusion, I'm all for it. But realize that the executives themselves are on the other side of this one from you, as is for that matter the law.

It's an odd mentality, where the cause-and-effect here wouldn't be the obvious "Executive negligence in their company losing many jobs", but rather "the public caring that the executives cut corners and ignored signs because it would cost time and thus money resulted in this disaster, and subsequent job loss".

I don't know how you got this from what I said. I never suggested that the public caring about the environment is to blame for lost

Top execs will already pay the price when they get the boot from their cushy jobs for the poor oversight they have exercised.

Yeah, where's the sympathy for those poor executives. How will Tony Hayward survive without his 2.5 million pound compensation package? If he gets fired and can't find another job, he might have to live in only semi-luxury for the rest of his life! The horror!

No they have not been punished. The company remains practically unscathed. The notional stock value has not impacted their profits. They're still raking in money hand over fist. At their profit margins the cost of this spill won't make any serious dent. And even if it did, they'll pull an Exxon-Valdez and tie up any judgment in court for so long that they pay a fraction of what they should.

They have spent $1.25B. The market estimates that the total cost to BP of this fiasco will be around $100B. Now, you

It's like the Mythical Man-Month -- Just throwing resources at the problem isn't necessarily going to make it better, and could well make it worse.

I'm not sure about that. While Brooks was talking about software and computer hardware engineers, I'm sure you weren't literally talking about plugging the hole with BP engineers. It would be more logical to use BP executives, since they know more about oil flow than computer nerds. Just a hypothesis to test: We would have to actually try stuffing the pipe with BP executives to see if that would stop the flow. And unlike Brooks's theory, I suspect using more BP executives would improve improve the pipe some

The problem is, apparently, that the well is incredibly unstable. They had a list of other ideas in the event that their "top kill" method didn't work. They didn't even try them because they were seeing pressure numbers and other signs that the well was unstable. They are, reportedly, afraid that if they try to stop the flow completely at the blowout preventer that the pressure will destroy the blowout preventer and the well creating a huge, uncontrolled leak that is coming out of many more places and at a higher volume than is currently coming out of that riser pipe.

Oddly, the situations is somewhat more complex than the army of armchair deep sea drilling experts suspect. LMAO @ "... lower a large cork..."! You'll be suggesting they just put a tray under the sump plug and drain it from there next!

Anyone who honestly thinks BP isn't doing E V E R Y T H I N G in its power to stem the flow is a fool. Apart from the pollution considerations, the bad PR, and of course not forgetting the clamour from the large cork manufactures now wanting a slice of the action, if they're now pulling 10000 barrels a day from that well and a barrel runs at around 70 bucks... well, I'd say you do the math(s) but someone might suggest I lower a cork on it so I'll do it for ya - $700000!
That they are also trying to stem the flow of bad publicity is totally understandable too, because people keep posting asshat ideas like "lower a large cork" and all the numbnuts dolts read that and nod saying, "yer... why dontcha just lower a large cork BP? Eh? Why dontcha?". And people cheering when buffoons suggest that the whole company should concentrate their efforts a mile down instead - does he expect every PA, secretary, programmer, lorry driver, pump attendant, etc, to all be controlling their own ROV at the site?

Now I'm not saying BP are squeaky clean in this - my guess is that BP suspect that capping the well is nigh on impossible without the relief wells easing the pressure though obviously they'll keep trying - but to think they don't want to stop the oil flow is frankly as ludicrous a concept as having every BP employee lowering their very own large cork!

As Fnkmaster (89084) [slashdot.org] wrote: (on Tuesday June 08, @01:49PM (#32499016))... the "punish BP" bloodlust... is crazy when so many Americans work in the industry as all you're doing is shooting yourselves in the foot! If BP doesn't do the deep drilling someone else will and maybe the next company to do it won't be hiring so many Americans and pumping so much money into the US economy?

Anyone who honestly thinks BP isn't doing E V E R Y T H I N G in its power to stem the flow is a fool.

I believe that BP has every incentive to stop the leak.

I also believe BP has every incentive to do so as cheaply as possible. For instance, they originally wanted to only drill one relief well [yahoo.com] until Congress insisted they start on another one. Why? Well because a relief well is not a guaranteed fixe [salon.com]. Sometimes the first one you drill doesn't do much, assuming you even succeed in hitting the foot-wide hole with the other foot-wide hole you're drilling at an angle through miles of rock.

I am not about to second-guess the engineers who are busting their ass working on fixes. I fully realize that what they are trying to do is exceedingly difficult -- I mean, that's part of why it's such a big problem. However that also applies to the relief wells. With the problems that keep coming up in all the other attempted solutions, just assuming that a single relief well will work on the first try seems ludicrous. Could the extra cost possibly outweigh the impact if the relief well fails and oil spews until they can go through the whole process of drilling another? Could you, as an engineer, justify that lack of redundancy when solving a problem of this magnitude?

But those decisions aren't made by engineers. Engineers quantify the risks as best they can, and executives make the decision off the summary middle management hands them. For them, maybe the cost vs risk works out? Maybe a mentality that you cut corners and do the minimum (or less) and just hope things work out is so entrenched that they would still try it even after things had already failed to work out?

And not that I don't think their Top Kill attempt was anything but sincere, but that's exactly why it strikes me as odd that you'd mention that $700000/day figure for siphoning oil as some kind of incentive for plugging the well. When they really fix the well it won't be usable anymore. So no more oil. Which gives them the opposite incentive. Again, this is just the thought train your observation led me down.

How exactly can the PR and marketing department assist a mile underwater? Answer, they can't. BP has to survive as a company in order to be able to fix the problem and make amends. They could go bust, but how would that help anyone?

Listen. Yesterday i did type "oil spill" in google search and got into the bp website, where i found that they have a suggestions page and a volunteer page and I could actually participate for solving this problem. I think it is much more helpful for everyone if bp handles these search terms.

Or do you prefer to get a massive amount of hate webpages from bloggers that would actually do no difference to the actual problem?

This is a pretty ignorant, if rhetorical, question. Along the lines of asking what good replacing a 100w incandescent light bulb with a 23w CFL is in the grand scheme of things. The answer? The single light bulb and the single PR marketing action make virtually no impact. Are they pointless?

BP obviously wants to continue operating and overcome this disaster. Regardless of what other actions they take, do you think that is possible WITHOUT trying to boost their image through PR?

I'm saying at this point I don't think they can boost their image. Wasting money on PR seems like throwing money down the toilet. There's a point at which you're so reviled that any attempt to make yourself look less despicable only feeds into the negative view the public has of you.

While it may be good PR for them to have what they have on the Oil Spill link, it actually IS a very helpful link versus the rest of the results. Have you actually looked at what they have on that page? While the highlighted area is basically to let people know what they are doing, there is a bunch of very useful information and links also on that page. Important phone numbers, links to the four State response websites, ROV footage...stuff that they don't HAVE to put on a "Damage Control" link. They may only have done it because that was the only way to have any hope of repairing their image once this is over, but it's a better source of information that most of the other links you'll find in the results. AND it's in the sponsored link section, clearly pointing out that it's not just a run of the mill search result.

They have tried to minimize the spill. They're estimates were bullshit. They're claim that there were no plumes is bullshit. Their claim that they're fully funding the cleanup is bullshit. They got called out very publicly by a group of Gulf coast mayors who literally had to crash a press conference where their reps were coating themselves in all sorts of nauseating platitudes to reveal that BP hasn't even returned these guys' phone calls.

What BP should do is apologize about fifty times a day, do what it's claiming it's doing, stop trying to bullshit everyone about the extent of the damage, and goddamn well take what's coming to it. I mean, these are oil patch guys, but they're behaving like a bunch of stupid pissy prissies.

There's a point at which you're so reviled that any attempt to make yourself look less despicable only feeds into the negative view the public has of you.

Damn, and I just ran out of mod points.

This is the feeling I and everyone I know gets when we see BP commercials about how they're fixing stuff. "STFU and get back to work." No one wants to hear BP talk about how hard they're working. The only thing anyone is interested in hearing is "The leak is plugged, the oil has been skimmed, and life is returning to normal." Anything else just backfires and makes BPs image worse.

If I were in BP's shoes, I'd buy ad space and show a live 30-second feed of the rovers, th

Yes. It worked, for the most part, for Exxon and Union Carbide. They'll, probably, just try to play by the play-book those two companies used. History shows that the public has a short memory/attention span.

The Valdez incident was in a fairly unpopulated part of a state with a very small population. Union Carbide was in India, and thus not only a long way off, but impacting foreigners.

This is literally happening in a very populated, economically important region of the Continental United States. I mean, these people still talk about Hurricane Andrew, so no, I don't think they'll be forgetting how BP poisoned the Gulf Coast.

Well of course we need oil. We need gold too, but would you just shrug your shoulders if they were mining it in your backyard and managed to poison your property with mercury? That we need various commodities doesn't mean that we should give companies free passes on damage.

I never understand the sort of equivocation posters like you put forth. What does that even mean? Oh well, we've got to put up with the destruction of economically important fisheries and tourist areas because WE NEED OIL! I mean, th

While both incidents were unfortunate, I'd have to put BP in a different class than Exxon and Union Carbide. For the most part the two companies haven't had many major disasters or accidents in their long history. BP on the other hand have had 2 other major incidents [wikipedia.org] in the last 5 years. Over the last 3 years, BP has recorded 760 OSHA safety violations [thedailyshow.com]. Their competitors:

Sunoco, 8

Conoco-Phillips, 8

Citgo, 2

Exxon, 1

In order words, BP has almost 40x the incidents than all their competitors combined.

Given that they've been at the "warmer, fuzzier, more baby-seal-loving, oil company" PR game for something like a decade now(I'm guessing that they might be doing a little less advertising in National Geographic in the near future; but they were all over the place with their "Beyond Petroleum" spin) I'd assume that they have an entrenched internal culture that is convinced of exactly that.

Given the public's relatively short attention span, and the fervor of the ostensibly-libertarian-but-basically-authoritarian-corporatist wing, which blithely asserts that any state interference in the sovereign right of corporations to do whatever the fuck they want, or even say mean things when the inevitable consequences occur, is socialist fascism; they may well be correct.

I just typed "gulf oil spill" in Google. What I came up with is three stories; one about Obama trying to deflect criticism about his handling of the spill, one about the confirmation of oil plumes (and once again BP is caught lying, BTW), and one about the fight to contain the oil spill to last months.

About the only really questionable one is a site obviously put up by BP called gulfoilspill.com, and it's a helluva laugh to read.

Google is not giving BP good PR. In fact, because of its news scanning, it's

You do realise that they've bought an ad space, they're not paying to bury all the other organic search results. It's one ad that appears in the clearly marked sponsored area and links to a page that gives some information about how they're trying (and failing) to do anything, with some webcams and a pitiful "have you got any ideas to help?" request. It's hardly preventing people finding the information they want, any more than Dulux are trying to destroy our cultural heritage by preventing us accessing information on the great artists because they show an ad when I search for "painting".

I'd have expected less of them... But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.

But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.

I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true or if the people are lying but the stinks worse than crude if it's the truth and I hope the US AG criminal investigation [washingtonpost.com] gets to the bottom of that.

I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true...

... but I'm going to spread the rumour anyway because it shows BP in a bad light and BP are the current people we love to hate.

A friend of mine said BP wanted to use mashed up baby dolphins to try and plug the leak, but I don't know if it's true...

The problem is that they're minimizing basically took a spill that apparently is puking out 12,000 to 20,000 barrels a day and claimed it was only 5,000 (we know now that they have it partially contained that the spill was at least over twice as much per day as they were claiming). They also, even as late as a week ago, were claiming that there was no evidence for vast plumes, and that too has been falsified.

BP has pretty much lied about everything from the very beginning. I can't see at this point how th

but this really isn't news. Money has a voice. More money has a louder voice. Lots of money can shout out all other voices.

I hope the search providers enjoy their windfall. I hope the states, the Feds, and the individual victims of this disaster take careful note of how much money is being spent on non-productive spin control, rather than actually fixing the problem and cleaning up the aftermath.

If anything, every dime they put toward stupid commercials and other PR stunts should be matched (by them) and put into a "Future of the Gulf Coast" fund where it can be used solely for long term needs to be determined at a later date. Then, in 10 years when the fisheries still are in a terrible state and BP is in a legal battle over how the cleanup was handled and what government did what without BPs consent they will have a little money to put toward rebuilding the ecology of the coast.

The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain. Say that this shady keyword purchasing damage control made you so upset that you went down and picketed the BP station in your neighborhood. Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf.

You could ask the owner of the local gas station to switch to a new franchise. Most of those places are run like fast-food chains: Joe Citizen signs a multi-year renewable contract with the Company X in which he gets to use their branding, in exchange for buying gasoline from them and forking over some percentage of his revenue. Abandoning the contract early would probably cost the owner a great deal of money, though, and those guys are struggling enough as it is with the wild fluctuation in gas prices (the more it changes, the worse off they are). It would all depend on just how angry he was at BP.

Not pretty, but convincing enough of them to switch would be the real way to harm BP. Just boycotting BP stations is pretty much useless.

How exactly is their buying keywords shady? They are leading the cleanup/damage control efforts, as it is their responsibility. They're doing everything they can to get information out, to the point of paying for keywords to point you to their updates.

Say what you will about BP's operations, but their corporate communications seem to be top-notch. Those folks are doing all the right things.

The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain. Say that this shady keyword purchasing damage control made you so upset that you went down and picketed the BP station in your neighborhood. Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf.
What can I do? Write my senator demanding what exactly?

I don't know what the BP stations look like in your area, but around here they're as dirty and sleazy as they get. I didn't like getting gas there before the spill.

Oh, come'on, what a lame argument. Your local gas station owner could always switch companies (especially if he's environmentally responsible). Also, he's probably a millionaire and can afford to lose some business. Finally, even if all of us "morally outraged" people quit buying BP gas, we're such a small segment of the overall population they'd only see a small dip in their profits anyways. Basically, you're demonstrating the classic example in psychology of a narcissistic personality, "If I stop buyi

"Oh, come'on, what a lame argument. Your local gas station owner could always switch companies (especially if he's environmentally responsible). Also, he's probably a millionaire and can afford to lose some business"

You're missing the point: Oil is fungible and is traded several steps up the supply chain from you buying gas. You cannot affect demand for BP oil. When GP says you'll have a minimal impact on BP, he's wrong; in fact you'll have none at all.

The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain. Say that this shady keyword purchasing damage control made you so upset that you went down and picketed the BP station in your neighborhood. Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf.

What can I do? Write my senator demanding what exactly?

Actually, odds are that none of the gas you are buying at a BP station actually came from BP. The stuff all comes from the same local distributors who pass it back and forth like it's water. Local stations (none of which in the US are actually owned by BP) just pay for the right to use the name. To boycott BP you'd need to track their shipments in and out of places and then find out where things went. Unless the local distributors boycott BP (not likely) there isn't anything you'll be able to do as a c

Why boycott BP? Do you think the other oil companies would do anything differently? Do you think "I'll buy from those nice ExxonMobil people because they care far more about the environment than profit"?

It's a bit like boycotting a particular hard disk manufacturer because one of your drives failed. The exact same thing would happen with any other manufacturer so there's no point boycotting one when they're all the same.

That is, of course, unless we're talking bout Samsung. They really do make the most

So let me get this straight... I can go to Google, type in "oil spill" then click on one of BP's sponsored links. And in the act of doing this, I can magically transfer money, real money, from a company that fucked up the environment to one that gives me free software like Chrome, and Google Earth, and Android?

Relax, dude, I'm pretty sure we can all find plenty of things to blame BP for without pretending that buying keyword impressions is somehow harmful.

Go google "oil spill". Sure enough, the top sponsored link will be the BP oil spill site. The other sponsored link will be... yet another partison point of view from someone who was willing to pay to get a message out. That's what sponsored links are.

Right below them - right where they always are - you still find the real search results. How that squares with the flow of information being "clogged" is beyond me.

I'd find more to complain about if BP wasn't trying to present a strong media presence. You know, saying "I'd like my life back" or something like that.

For any company with an extra $40B lying around, a takeover of BP while trumpeting "We will fix this collosal disaster because BP can't!" would be a PR goldmine. Use BP's equipment and personel to keep working on the spill, then reap the massive profits that the company will continue to make after this mess is all but forgotten by society's collective ADHD.

The only problem is that there's no good solution here. BP's people aren't the only ones trying to stop the leak, you've got engineers from all of the big companies working on this. They all see the damage that this spill is doing to their industry and want it stopped. The point is that nobody knows how to stop this, short of relief wells. There's already a ton of uncertainty about how much oil has leaked, how much more is going to leak, what's going to happen to all that oil under the water, what happens w

Hmmmm, a story combining the ever-inflammatory idea of censorship with the, 'greatest environmental disaster of our time,' delivered right to our internet front-door here on slashdot. I have my money on more than 400 comments in the first 4 hours.

Completely BS writeup of the article. This is a straightforward and common tactic used by companies in situations like this. Yes, with all the band-wagoning and rhetoric surrounding the issue its not even a bad idea.
The spill is obviously a tragedy of incredible proportions, which invites entirely too much disinformation, half truth and anecdotal evidence. No matter what BP did here they would be crucified for either having no strategy, or (like the poster did) assuming the strategy was a CYA move.
Everyo

I don't think Google and Yahoo need the money from the devastation BP has caused. There are so many better uses for that money than public spin. Do I really care if my oil for my gasoline comes from BP or some one else? No! I go to the gas station and fill up. BP has no PR issue with the public at large, they have a economic and environment issue they have to address. In the end BP is now hunched over the same oil barrel they profited from and Uncle Sam has the lube out and the politician line is forming in

Yes, if you search for "oil spill" in google, there is a single sponsored link (and identified as such) before the search results. About 6 results down, there are image results with oil covered birds and such. Is it news that one of the most profitable companies in the world is spending a relatively piddly amount on damage control? It's not as if they are buying out search engines.

they've been under estimating the leaking oil, telling us things are progressing fine and then telling us they failed, etc etc so I hope this bit about them purchasing search terms is not a surprise. They, like Exxon before them, plan on surviving this and moving on with business of making billions in profit every year from oil sales. They might have to change their name in the US though because the Gulf is not Alaska and it's likely that this could spread up the easter seaboard too. All area which are fa

So BP is spending their money on ads for a relevant search term and when you click on the ad you are lead to information on what they are doing with the oil spill. And we're supposed to be angry at them for doing this? Huh?
Maybe their info is bogus or they should be providing more info. Maybe they have totally botched the oil spill. But it would make more sense to me if people were outraged if they DIDN'T buy ads that lead people to information.

People need to learn how to properly use search engines and interpret their results. SPONSORED LINKS are exactly that - people pay to have their links appear when certain terms are searched; that's how search engines make money. Sponsored links aren't the best and most relevant result for your search (and are likely the exact opposite).

I have a friend who does affiliate marketing, and makes a lot of money off of people's dumb search habits, specifically their willingness to click sponsored links, believi

The problem is that they weren't leaving the pump unattended, they were interfering with what the operators thought needed to be done and skimping on materials. Had they just been leaving it unattended, we probably wouldn't be in the current mess. But then again BP has a substantial history of fucking things up, and has yet to actually learn anything from past experience.

You're out of your mind if you think they are going to get the bill for "what they have destroyed". I'm sure they'll be fined an amount that SEEMS like a lot to everyday joes, but is in fact next to meaningless to a huge corp. like BP. A big enough fine should preclude them from declaring any profit for that quarter - wait and see, I'm sure they'll be declaring plenty of profit...

Ah yes, the ol' "the media is evil vs. the just-a-little-evil-company/politician/organization".

Whatever the media has been doing, it's BP whose spinning is making things worse. They lied about the amount of oil leaking. They tried to deny there were oil plumes, basically calling a number of experts alarmists. They've bullshitted about the amount of aid they've been providing, the amount of work they've been doing on the cleanup.

BP isn't just "not perfect", it's a pack of self-serving liars who, on top of